Manliness - Softcover

Mansfield, Harvey C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300122543 ISBN 13: 9780300122541

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2007

Synopsis

Why do men need to feel important? It's their manliness. But is manliness obsolete? Is it even a virtue?

This book invites—no, demands—a response from its readers. It is impossible not to be drawn in to the provocative (often contentious) discussion that Harvey Mansfield sets before us. This is the first comprehensive study of manliness, a quality both bad and good, mostly male, often intolerant, irrational, and ambitious. Our “gender-neutral society” does not like it but cannot get rid of it. Drawing from science, literature, and philosophy, Mansfield examines the layers of manliness, from vulgar aggression, to assertive manliness, to manliness as virtue, and to philosophical manliness. He shows that manliness seeks and welcomes drama, prefers times of war, conflict, and risk, and brings change or restores order at crucial moments. Manly men in their assertiveness raise issues, bring them to the fore, and make them public and political—as for example, the manliness of the women’s movement. After a wide-ranging tour from stereotypes to Hemingway and Achilles, to Nietzsche, to feminism, and to Plato, the author returns to today’s problem of “unemployed manliness.” Formulating a reasoned defense of a quality hardly obedient to reason, he urges men, and especially women, to understand and accept manliness, and to give it honest and honorable employment.

About this title

From the Author

A Conversation with Harvey Mansfield
 
Q:  Why did you decide to write a book on manliness?
A:  We today have embarked, not fully realizing what we are doing, on a radical experiment to make a society never before seen in history—a gender-neutral society in which your sex matters as little as possible and does not give you your rights, your duties, and your place.  Manliness, a quality that prevails in one sex, stands in the way of this aspiration. Is it obsolete? My book shows what manliness brings to a free society: confidence in the face of risk and trouble from those who love risk too much.
 
Q:  You identify “educated women” as the primary target audience for your book. Why?
A:  Women are better listeners than men, and I want to persuade them of the need to make room in their lives and thoughts for manliness.  Even if they don’t agree, they will be interested to see what I make of manliness and of differences between the sexes. I assume men will want to learn about manliness. Anyway, they ought to.
 
Q:  What is the difference between “manliness” and “masculinity”?
A:  “Masculinity” collects traits that are common to all or almost all males; these are close to the male body. “Manliness” is a quality of the soul only a few men have, and they typically look down on most men for not being manly. Nowadays “masculinity” is sometimes used to depreciate manliness by critics who don’t care for it.
 
Q:  Who’s manly and who’s not?
A:  Among actors John Wayne and Clint Eastwood are manly, Alan Alda and pretty boys like Leonardo DiCaprio and Jude Law are not.  Harry S. Truman was manly, Jimmy Carter is not. Any novel by Elmore Leonard revolves around a manly man, usually a criminal. But my point is not to provide criteria for judging who is manly. Most people know that already.  They don’t know how to judge what is manly.   What do manly men do for us? Are they more trouble than they are worth?

About the Author

Harvey C. Mansfield is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government, Harvard University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0300122543
• ISBN 13: 9780300122541
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 289